


Home

by narcissablaxk



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, Nygmobblepot, Oswald's free from prison after his mother's death, nygmobblepot week, slight deviation from canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 18:46:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14026431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: When Oswald is released from prison after the murder of Theo Galavan, he figures he has no friends and no associates. He decides to visit his mother's grave, since he couldn't see her while he was in prison. Instead, he learns that he does have a friend, maybe more. He has a home.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> Day two of Nygmobblepot Week is sharing a bed. This is a bit sad, but I hope you enjoy!

Oswald’s first day outside of prison brought a thunderstorm. The sky lit up like a firework show, the clouds obscuring the thin tendrils of lightning, spreading the tentacles of light farther than they could usually travel. He spent some time watching them, letting the rain soak him, relishing in the open air, in the feeling of freedom, even if it was the freedom of just being rained on. 

He was still wearing that stupid prison jumpsuit, flimsy and dirty, but he didn’t mind. He would burn it after this night, anyway. He couldn’t wait to crawl into one of his safe houses, take a shower, and rest. He couldn’t wait to plan his revenge on Tabitha Galavan, on Jim Gordon even, but it would have to wait. 

First, he had to visit his mother’s grave. 

He had no friends, no one to take him there, but he figured a cold, shivering pilgrimage to her grave was just what his mother deserved. She suffered for him, for weeks, and he never thanked her. He never got to tell her how much she meant to him. He let his tears mingle with the rain, and plodded on, down the loose gravel, toward the city. 

He walked as long as his leg would carry him, not nearly as far as he wanted to, before he was forced to stop. He could just start to smell the city again, and not the awful death stink of Arkham. The comfort of Gotham wrapped around him like a blanket, but still, he shivered. Perhaps he would die out here instead of in Arkham. Would that be ironic, to be free and then die? Or would it just be tragic, and irritating? He bristled just thinking about it. 

Down the lane, headlights turned onto the street, piercing through the steady rain like the sun would break through the clouds. Oswald shielded his eyes and ignored them; cars weren’t particularly common on the outskirts of the city, especially near the Narrows, but if he kept his head down, he’d be fine. He knew how to survive. 

The car was creeping by, so slow Oswald was sure the driver was looking for someone or something. A new victim, perhaps? The insidious nature of the Narrows meant that the driver could be doing anything from looking for their dog to tracking down new victims to turn into drug mules. 

Whatever it was, Oswald wanted no part of it. 

The car’s brakes squeaked as it came to a full stop in front of Oswald. Fear finally settled in and draped over his typical paranoia. 

“Whoever you are, just leave me be,” he said finally, barely heard over the splatter of the rain and the rumble of the engine. 

The window creaked downward, getting stuck about halfway for a second before it lurched on. “Oswald, I’ve been looking everywhere.” 

“Ed?” If he squinted hard enough, Oswald could just make out his silhouette in the driver’s seat, smiling brightly at him. Self-consciously, he wiped at the tears on his face, mixed completely with the rain. 

“I came to pick you up from Arkham, but they released you earlier than I expected,” he explained. “Get in.” 

“You – you came to pick me up?” he repeated, dumbfounded. His friendship with Ed, while thrilling and comforting, had been fleeting, momentary. He never thought that he’d see him again once he got out of prison. 

Ed leaned over and pushed the passenger door open. “Of course I did,” he said simply. 

Oswald wiped at his cheeks, as if to hide new tears that had yet to spill over, and slid into the seat, lifting his bad leg gently into the car. It was warm in there, so warm that he was sure Ed had to be uncomfortable, but the heat was lovely. Arkham had been so drafty, the rain cold and hard. He wanted to swim in the warmth of the car. 

“Are you comfortable?” Ed asked, almost nervously. 

“I am eternally grateful to you,” Oswald said in lieu of a response. Ed inclined his head, but the smile on his face betrayed his pleasure. 

“I know that you must be cold and hungry, but I thought…” he trailed off. Oswald turned toward his friend and tilted his head, waiting for him to continue. “I…I thought you might want to visit your mother.” 

“W – wh – how did –?”

“You asked me to visit her,” Ed said matter-of-factly. “But you never got to. I imagined that, if she was so important to you, her resting place would be the first place you would want to go. You are, Oswald, nothing if not sentimental.” 

Oswald straightened his shoulders defensively. “I am not sentimental.” 

Ed shrugged. “If you say so.” 

***

Oswald dissolved into tears the moment he spotted his mother’s headstone. He had trusted Ed in the arrangements, from his mother’s casket to the headstone, to the words etched into the front. He figured Ed would be…sterile, almost detached from the tragedy, and would thus make better decisions. But the headstone was a shining, beautiful marble, not the same crumbling, weak headstones of the surrounding graves, and the epitaph shone in the rain. 

_“An angel visited the green earth, and took a flower away. A song is more lasting than the voice of birds.”_

“I wasn’t sure what to put,” Ed confessed in the silence. “Beloved mother seemed a little…stale.” 

Oswald couldn’t speak, but Ed seemed to understand. There were some things that didn’t need to be said. He kneeled in the dirt, struggling with his bad leg, and allowed Ed to help him, his hand tight on his shoulder. Ed left his hand there, but whether it was to steady Oswald in the soft dirt or for comfort, Oswald couldn’t tell. 

After moments, or maybe it was hours, he let Ed lift him up from the dirt, and kept his hand tight in the crook of his elbow the whole walk back to the car. Somewhere along the way, Ed’s other hand settled on top of his own, gentle and reassuring. 

They drove to Ed’s apartment in silence. 

***

It took almost an hour to scrub all the dirt off of his body. Oswald let the water run brown, gray, and then clear, standing under the warm spray as long as he could before it started to go cold. His bruises, remnants of his time at Arkham, were more visible now, blooming petals of purple and blue and green. 

Ed left him a pair of his own pajamas, too long and too large on Oswald’s slight frame, but they smelled like home. 

“I made you something to eat,” Ed’s voice was softer here, in his home, and Oswald finally felt a smile pull at his lips. “It’s not much, just what I had in the fridge, but I remembered how much you liked this last time I made it.” 

It was just pasta, with some cheese sprinkled liberally on top, but it was warm, and delicious, and Oswald wanted to weep all over again. After his mother died, he never thought he’d feel this again. Home. 

“I set up the bed for you.” 

Ed’s voice shook Oswald from his reverie, and he looked up to see him, dressed in the same pajamas that Oswald was wearing, his glasses just a little down his nose than before. 

“I can’t take your bed –”

“I insist,” Ed said simply, bouncing over to his couch and settling in, opening his book. Oswald watched him for a while before he smiled and limped over to the bed. He settled between the sheets, relishing in the way that the cotton felt. After months of Arkham, with no blankets and a bug-ridden mattress for a bed, this felt like heaven. 

“Ed?” he asked into the silence. 

“Oswald,” Ed replied, tilting his head in his friend’s direction. 

“I will never be able to thank you for this,” he said, pushing through his shaky voice. “I – I thought, when I got out –”

“You thought you’d have no friends, and no one to turn to,” Ed said matter-of-factly. “I know what you thought. But you were wrong. I don’t have many friends, Oswald. If it makes you feel less beholden to me, perhaps it would comfort you to know that you seem to be my only one. Which would, by default, make you my best friend.” 

Oswald was definitely crying now. “Ed –”

“I can break, I can be clogged, I can be attacked, I can be given, I can be kept, I can be crushed, yet I can be whole at the same time. What am I?” He sat up in his couch, turning toward Oswald, who wiped at the tears furtively. 

Oswald chuckled. “I see you still love riddles.” 

“A heart,” Ed said softly. “You have a soft one, Oswald, despite your ruthless nature. And you showed it to me, and now I feel…protective of it. In your position, having a heart is a weakness, and it will, more often than not, get you killed. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have a heart all the time.” 

He rose from his seat and perched himself at the edge of the bed. “Being who we are is hard,” he admitted. “Perhaps a selfish part of me thought that if I helped you, if I gave you a place to be safe, I could get the same thing from you.” 

“I thought, after my mother –” Oswald trailed off, averting his gaze as another tear slid down his cheek. “that I would be alone forever.” 

Ed scooted closer to Oswald on the bed, close enough that they were touching, and leaned forward, gently wiping away the errant tear. “It seems you made a miscalculation,” he pointed out. 

Oswald laughed, feeling the muscles that seemed to have atrophied while in Arkham stretching at the almost hysterical laugh. Ed smiled, and lifted his arm, offering his embrace. The laughter quickly dissolved into overwhelmed tears, and Ed held him for a long time, running his fingers through his hair, whispering words of comfort that Oswald couldn’t hear or decipher, and held him until his cries quieted. 

Oswald, feeling Ed’s hand still in his hair, glanced up at him. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. Gently, he reached up and pulled his glasses off and folded them, placing them on the side table. He settled into his embrace, his head on Ed’s ribs, and sighed. 

“Good night, Oswald,” Ed’s voice was thick with sleep, the words so muddled they were almost one. 

“Good night, Ed.”


End file.
